The Israeli government has been revoking the citizenship of hundreds of Bedouin living in the south of the country, including those who have served in the IDF.
When the Bedouin go to the Interior Ministry to renew their identity cards, get a birth certificate, or register a name change, they are informed that citizenship was given to them in error and are immediately downgraded to residents, according to a report published by Ha’aretz.
They then have to spend years and a considerable amount of money navigating Israeli bureaucracy in an attempt to regain their citizenship – often unsuccessfully.
As opposed to citizens, residents of Israel are unable to vote in National elections or run for office. They do not receive Israeli passports, and cannot automatically pass on their status as residents to their children.
The system has also meant that an entire family can be Israeli citizens except for a couple of members, who have had their citizenship stripped from them.
Yael Agmon, who often accompanies Bedouin who do not speak Hebrew to the Interior Ministry to help them with the process of renewing identity cards, told Ha’aretz that “You can clearly see how a clerk enters their details into a computer and then they instantly lose their citizenship. They then have to contend with an endless bureaucratic process.
“Sometimes it costs them tens of thousands of shekels in lawyers’ fees, and they don’t always get their citizenship in the end.”
The Interior Ministry, which is run by Aryeh Deri MK, the head of the Shas political party, told the Israeli paper that these instances were simply cases of determining legal status and that “the minister has directed officials at the Population and Immigration Authority to handle the process involving this group of people in the easiest and simplest way possible”.
However, Aida Touma-Suleiman MK, a member of Israel’s Joint List party, said that if efforts were not made soon to resolve the issue, it would be taken to the High Court of Justice.
“There is no justification for this policy,” she says. “The ministry is blatantly violating the law.
“It’s unacceptable that in one family living under one roof, half the children are citizens while the other half are residents or people with indeterminate status.”
